Secret Service Overwhelmed By Threats Against Obama

The Secret Service is getting so many threats against President Obama's life that they need to cut back in their other duties.

Does anyone see a problem here? I think the solution is to put some of these nutcases on trial, get long prison terms for them, publicize it, and maybe it will make the other scoundrels think before they threaten the president's life.

What's the current penalty? An interview and forget it? Well, don't forget it. Prosecute diligently to the fullest extent of the law.

This is ridiculous and should be addressed with a strong arm.

Industrial Strength Men (And Women)

I was looking at one of the magazines at the fitness club.

(I'm a fitness freak. I show up about once every four days when I'm not being good. Heh, I'm not a fitness freak exactly. Just someone trying not to die too early, but it's a challenging thing to keep up.)

The mag: "Men's Fitness." It had two covers, if I was looking at it right, because the cover in the picture is actually an ad. Then the real cover is after it.

The saying "Release Your Inner Superman" could be the slogan for the whole magazine, the parts I looked at. Because the guys and gals pictured in it are definitely industrial strength. Lots of rippling muscles and manly stuff.

The women are very tough looking too. Not muscle builder tough but looking good -- in the industrial sense of the word. You might be afraid to touch one of them.

My fitness routine isn't going to get me there. But I guess I can live with that.

A Kindle

There's now a Kindle in the family, not mine.

I'm going to be testing it out with a book, though, in case I want to get one. Right now I'm not a big fan, for various reasons. One, it seems a little tough to navigate to various places in a book. But I haven't really had much of a chance to mess with it.

And looking at the books at Amazon that are available, it doesn't seem like an endless selection yet. It still looked pretty limited even at thousands.

But who knows? If I get some face- and hand-time with it, maybe I'll be captivated.

Also I want to see if there's some way of brightening it up. It seems a little too dull looking for my eyes. We shall see how it works out. So far ... not much experience.

Who's Karzai's Favorite Monkee?

Look at the first picture. Karzai with the almost-omnipresent hat. How does he keep it on? Look, it's a mile above his ears. It ought to slip off all the time.

You can see the after picture, that his head is as slick as Antarctica. What's keeping that hat on?

Beyond that, who is Karzai's favorite Monkee? It'd have to be Mike with the hat of course. I wonder what Mike thinks when he sees all those old pictures of him in a green hat. Why was I wearing a stocking hat?

The Boy In The Balloon

The boy in the balloon somehow beamed himself down, back to his house. They're investigating how he did it.

They saw him very clearly in the cockpit of the craft. They were watching, and next thing they knew he'd vanished.

Boehner Wants It Both Ways On The Stock Market

Back when the stock market was low, John Boehner said, "Certainly the stock market hasn't acted very well" since Obama's inauguration.

But now that it's finally closed over 10,000, he says, "At the end of the day, the American people aren't looking at the stock market in terms of putting food on the table. They want jobs, and they want them now."

Boehner might want to think back. President Obama's cleaning up the Republican party's mess. And doing a pretty good job of it. This old crap about not giving Obama credit for anything but giving him the blame for everything is so obviously false.

Why would anyone vote for these Republican liars?

They're With The Taliban Against America

Eugene Robinson has a great column about President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize and the lunatic fringe Republican response.

We will recall that Rush Limbaugh pointblank said he was with the Taliban on this one, in renouncing the award. In a bygone era, say a year ago, that would have been a "Hanoi Jane" moment. Robinson's use of that phrase points out what everyone seems to have forgotten: You're with US or the terrorists.

Now there were some Republicans who publicly did the right thing. Like John McCain, who for all his lack of sense a year ago, seems to know now it's better to be gracious than not.

I wanted to get in this great paragraph from Eugene Robinson:

Let the rejectionists fulminate and sputter until they wear their vocal cords out. Politically, they're only bashing themselves. As Republican leaders -- except RNC Chairman Michael Steele -- are beginning to realize, "I'm With the Taliban Against America" is not likely to be a winning slogan.

That's funny. You would think these idiots -- Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck -- would think before they open their yaps.

Health Insurers Promise To Gouge Us More

This is seriously an industry in need of some vast, sweeping reform. This is an industry that needs to be put on trial, actually, and some folks ought to be doing some serious time. The health insurance racket is criminal.

People are dying for the crass decisions they make on a daily basis. And the rest of us are simply going broke. Getting less, paying more.

Now they say they'll have no choice but to gouge us even more(!) -- their own claim -- if we do have health care reform. LOL. If anyone's crying out for a serious spanking, this is an industry that is!

I want our government to somehow extract themselves from the pockets of these worms, then to serve the people who voted for them. We need aid. We are beset upon by dangerous enemies, domestic enemies, who are every bit as dangerous as terrorists. That's true.

More people are dying at the hands of the health insurance industry than terrorists kill.

Too bad we couldn't stop them THERE before they came HERE. They're FROM here. And we need to stop them now.

Nancy & Lee

I got this as a download at Amazon the other day. It's one of the 50 albums at $5 for the month.

I've listened to it several times. It's cool.

I'm old enough to remember hearing the big songs on the radio, so I'm not coming to it fresh. But this is the first time I've ever heard the album with everything in context.

For the most part, the big songs, "Jackson" and I believe "Summer Wine," are very much like the other songs. Which is good.

The first song, "You've Lost That Loving Feeling," if you don't know what's coming on, Lee sounds like a frog. But once you get over that, his craggy old voice is very pretty (to me anyway).

Nancy has always been represented in my album collection by her "Boots" album, which I've always liked, except we laugh at a song like "Run For Your Life."

But back to this album. Nancy and Lee's vocals are effortless -- no one's being especially stretched. Still, that's OK. I like the laid back vibe of it. The little bits of banter are cute, like Bing and Rosie.

The silliest song is "Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman." The first time through didn't appeal to me but I like it OK now. I do remember something about an "Economic Opportunity Program" in the Johnson years... Can't think what they called it exactly. Nancy says she can't even pronounce that!

Most of the songs have a serious tone to them. These are very nice, including "Summer Wine," "Sundown Sundown," and my favorite, "Storybook Children." I could listen to these over and over.

"Jackson" was a big hit and ought to be familiar to everyone who was alive at the time.

"Some Velvet Morning" is also familiar, so it must have been on the radio. It's more of a free ranging, strange poetry, psychedelic song. I'm not sure what Phaedra means. Something to do with goddesses and flowers, I guess. It's Lee's experience in the song, how she gave him life and how she made it end. It's easily the most far out song (and very nice).

"Sand" reminds me of a western song with a Mideastern twist. Maybe his name is Sand because he blows in from somewhere on the western plains or Arabian desert. I said "Some Velvet Morning" was psychedelic, but it's "Sand" that has the strange backwards played instrumental break. Nancy uses "thee" and "thy" language in regards to Sand.

With the song "Lady Bird" I'm expecting something about Mrs. Johnson, but there aren't any references that have to do with her. So that's a relief. It's just a guy who has a "Lady Bird" in his woman, who's always flying high. Maybe Twittering.

The last song is "I've Been Down So Long (It Looks Like Up To Me)." Just a down on my luck song, applied to Lee. Another song on the funny side.

I didn't mention "Elusive Dreams." That's a serious song about a couple who roam from place to place in pursuit of their elusive dreams. Their child died in Alaska (that's the way I take it), so that's sad.

Nothing Happened Today

President Obama didn't win any major awards. I believe he thoroughly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, but it's OK to go a day without anything big.

We're again at peace with the moon. Although I thought it was suspicious that I didn't see it in the sky last night. I didn't freak out, because I assume if we blew it apart it would've been on the headlines.

And Marge Simpson limited herself to Playboy, although she is said to be in talks with Larry Flynt for more.

John Lennon's Birthday

I think today is John Lennon's birthday. I'm not looking it up to be sure. But I'm pretty sure it is.

So happy birthday, John Lennon! I also believe he was born in 1940. Going out on a limb on that one.

The Taliban, Hamas, And Republicans

Who's against President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize?

The Republican party, the Taliban, and Hamas.

Birds of a feather.

Who's against America? The same bunch.

So Is It Going To Happen?

Yesterday I saw somewhere, someone said that health care reform was essentially "fait accompli," which looks like "fat accomplice" misspelled.

So I take it it's a done deal. And now we're all excited that there could be an opt-out option for the states who don't want better health care for their residents. I can see some of the benefits of this option, because those states might see their residents fleeing for other states and decide that health care is important.

Would I want to live in a state that would just as soon I died? Not really. I like that whole concept of society appreciating my existence enough to let me live. But if the Republicans had their way, of course we'd all be worked to death to enrich them, then hustled off to some death farm ... our bodies used to feed hogs or something. LOL. The Republicans are probably so evil they're going, How'd that guy find out about the farms?

In other news, I saw a weird story that Justice officials refused to take an oath before testifying before Congress ... so whatever hearing it was didn't happen. It said something about the Obama administration not wanting them to swear to tell the truth. I don't know. It just struck me as very weird. Is there some black handbook they give you when you're president, of secrets that must not be divulged? A box with cloaks and daggers that you have to guard?

It strikes me as very weird that as soon as Obama became president that we couldn't investigate Bush, couldn't get rid of some of the terrible practices of Bush, etc.

So there must be something they show you when you become president, and you step back and say, Oh, my God, and decide you can't govern in an open and transparent way.

I still like Obama quite a lot. I just wonder what happens between Election Day and the day after the Inauguration!

Record Club Ads -- The Monkees

I always loved looking at record club ads in magazines when I was a kid. I never had any money to join them, but it was great to dream.

Now, thanks to the wonderful world of Google, we can see the ads again ... some of them anyway. They have full copies of old Life magazines there, which is quite a deal. The picture is from a two page ad for the RCA Victor Record Club, Dec. 22, 1967. Since I loved the Monkees (still do), I see they had three albums. I don't know why they didn't have the Pisces album on there, but it looks like the ad is clipped at the right hand side a little much. Maybe it was at the margin.

Of course I put the little Monkees covers at the top for this illustration, since they were scattered across the ad.

It's cute on Headquarters they highlight "Band 6," as though that's a great track to promo! And I wonder why, for the little cover they put a blue background.